"So, compadres?" Rico asked the traficantes gathered around the boat.

Grinning, each in turn extended a hand, and all the thumbs were down.

"You see, old man? I have no choice—"

A rabbit ear fell over his face. Mortified, he tossed his head to remove it, but it flopped limply back. "I have served your grandfather for forty years!" he shouted from behind it. "El Viejo will have you shot for this, I swear on my mother's grave!"

Lomas looked at him sadly. "No," the young man said with a sigh, "el Viejo said to hang you by your bare feet." He faced his men. "I am going to show this rabbit brain how to shoot from a moving boat."

He nodded at Alejandro. Alejandro yanked Flores to his feet, hustled him to the rail, and the coqueros lifted him into the rubber raft.

They towed him a hundred yards into the lagoon. As he watched, incredulous, Lomas tossed a ski into the glassy water, slipped in after it, and held up his hand.

Alejandro chambered the first round into an Uzi automatic rifle and handed it to Lomas in the water. Holding it aloft, Lomas swam to the ski, got his foot into it, and signaled. Alejandro gently eased the slack out of the towrope, nodded at Lomas's signal, and put the boat in gear.

With his weapon high above his head, Lomas rose like a monster from the deep, dragging a plume like a knight behind him and whooping like an Indian in a TV cowboy show.

The boat swept across the lagoon until it was almost out of sight, then curved back. The sound of its engine rose. Lomas was swinging in wide, graceful curves across its wake, firing the Uzi into the air at each skidding, breathless turn.

El Conejo Grande could hear cheering from the beach. The whine of the ski boat was growing louder; the campesinos clapped and shouted from the shore.

El Conejo Grande looked up. The cloud had drifted to the west.

Ay, Díos Mío, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, because...

The sound of the engine was deafening. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the boat shoot by, with Alejandro waving.

...because I dread the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell....

He heard three shots, dead behind him. One grazed his shoulder, and another struck his arm. He tore his eyes from the cloud and faced around.

Out of a sheet of spray, ten feet away, the muzzle of the Uzi had a hole like an altar candelabrum's. It licked at him with a tongue of flame, though he never heard the shot.

Slammed backward into the water, he glimpsed the cloud before he died and wondered if he saw a smile on the padre's craggy face.

But of course that could not be, he thought, for the padre never smiled.

***